This soda has a light citrus taste from the addition of grapefruit, lemon and lime juice. It’s a little too sweet for my liking but still distinctively less sugary than a regular soda. It’s important to note that I usually make my own sodas with sparkling water mixed with fruit juice so my sugar-soda-tolerance is quite low.

Why is yoga bunny detox healthy?

I haven’t had a “regular” soda in years, and I hope you haven’t either. I wrote a whole article about it which you can read if you’ve got time - Soft Drink, The Double Whammy.

Soda is one of the worst things you can put into your body. If it’s not full of refined sugar, then it’s full of aspartame which is worse. And most sodas are stocked full of chemicals. It’s just not worth drinking it.

So I was very happy to find a healthy alternative. Finally a company has realized that it’s possible to make a healthy soda that tastes just as good, if not better than the usual unhealthy brands.

I consider Yoga Bunny Detox to be a healthy alternative because it contains no refined sugars and no chemicals. The sweet taste is grape juice, not cane sugar. Grape juice in its concentrated form still has a high GI so you don’t want to drink buckets of this stuff, but it’s definitely a much, much, much healthier soda alternative so good for a treat or for something different if you’re sick of ordering water.

Yoga bunny also contains a few herbal infusions - Hemp, Echinacea and Ginseng. While I’m all for hemp and ginseng and their health benefits, I’m not so sure about the addition of Echniacea.

Why you don’t want to take Echinacea every day

Echinacea is a very healing herb which boosts the immune system by a lot. It’s one of my favorite supplements to take. However, Echinacea is only good to take if you are sick or getting sick, and only for 2-3 days at a time.

If you start consuming Echnicacea on a daily basis, then it can become very unhealthy because you’re constantly stimulating your immune system. Really you’re just tiring your body out. In extreme cases daily consumption of Echinacea can even lead to auto-immune diseases.

So if you’re taking a regular dose of Echinacea, you might want to do a little more research and reconsider your daily supplements.

While yoga bunny detox is trying to be super healthy, I think they’ve missed the mark a little with the addition of Echinacea. It would have been much better to just leave it out.

But hey, every now and again Echinacea is okay. And I’m getting tired of ordering water or juice when I’m out because of the lack of healthy drinks available, so I was very excited to find this soda sitting proudly under a stack of cheese and salad sandwiches.

If you have a soda addiction and want to kick it, of course it’s healthier to go the water and make-your-own-juices option, but if you need to wean yourself off a little, or love a treat, then something like yoga bunny detox is a good way to go.

This was yet again another overwhelming response to a High on Health blog contest, so a big thank you to everyone that entered.

And it’s been very entertaining reading through everyone’s pimple horror stories, and I’m so glad I’m not the only one that has a story!

The prize!

This blog contest is proudly sponsored by Vitale Natural Skin and Bodycare. Vitale provides a diverse selection of effective organic and natural skin care ranges and simple proven solutions to help with skin issues. You can visit their online store here - http://vitalenatural.com.au/.

The pack includes a Richesse Anago Facial Cleanser, Third Stone Botanicals Cederwood Refining Mist, Third Stone Botanicals Cederwood Moisture Gel and Remedica Clair Visage Serum. You can find more information about each of these products in Vitale’s store here.

How to enter

All you have to do is leave a comment in the box below with your pimple horror story.

My zit horror story is when I stupidly picked a small pimple on my nose which WOULD have been fine if I left it. But of course my picking turned into a whopping “Rudolph the red nose the reindeer” scab right on the tip of my nose that makeup couldn’t even cover. It took a week for the scab to fall off and that was one of the most embarassing weeks of my life. At least I can laugh about it now

If you don’t have a pimple story I’ll make it easy for you - just leave you name and age (or age range if you’re a bit shy!).

Make sure you leave your name and Email address so I can contact you if you’re the winner.

The contest will be open until Monday evening so get your entry in quick. On Tuesday 18th November I’ll randomly choose a winner.

Good luck!

There are a number of reasons why this could be happening, so if this is you please don’t give up just yet. In fact, I stumbled across a video the other day from The Renegade Health Show blog which demonstrates this exact situation and one treatment option really well.

“I’m not in the business of having acne”

The video is by a health journalist who suddenly broke out with a forehead full of pimples. Being in the health industry, he was so distressed with his sudden skin problem that he went crazy eliminating foods from his diet to try and heal his skin. He did not resort to changing his skin care routine or using any supplements or prescriptions. His diet was the only thing he altered.

Kevin eliminated so many foods from his diet that he ended up eating only raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. He even stopped taking all supplements that he was previously taking in case they were the culprit. Kevin had become an extreme raw foodist to try to heal his acne, but it still wasn’t working, he still had acne!

And then Kevin starting thinking that perhaps his acne wasn’t caused by an intolerance to food, but an overgrowth of Candida, yeast, fungus or mold in his body. He’d recently taken a course of antibiotics so it all made sense.

His treatment was to remove all sugars, including natural sugars and fruit from his diet.

As soon as Kevin stopped eating fruits, his skin cleared up completely. He also starting drinking green smoothies (vegetable only) throughout the day, and took a colon detoxifier and some natural anti-bacterial and anti-viral healing herbs.

Watch the video to hear Kevin’s story. He’s a really energetic guy so it’s definitely worth watching.

What I found most interesting about this video is Kevin’s description of the acne on his forehead. I’m beginning to think that you can look at your spots to help determine what the root cause of your acne is.

When I recently wrote my posts about my spotty forehead in London for example, my skin was in exactly the same shape as Kevin’s. Like Kevin I also had weird rash like splotchy acne on my forehead that was certainly different to the acne I’d experienced when I was a teenager. And I know I’m currently living with a Candida overgrowth in my body (I’ll be writing a series of blog posts about my Candida cleanse diet in January!!) so perhaps my forehead acne was primarily due to Candida too.

What does your acne look like?

Perhaps we really can learn more about the root cause of our acne by just looking at our skin. I’ve put together a table of acne types matched with possible root causes. This is data I’ve collected from my personal experience, research and from talking to High on Health readers.

I’d love your input so let me know if you agree or not with anything in this table. If we can get a list going of the type of acne and any found root causes, then we’re on the way to at least making it easier to finding treatment or cures for sufferers.

Before I finish off this post I want to mention that I don’t completely agree with all the herbs Kevin took (the little jar he held up in the video) because that jar is packed full of very “warming” herbs.

While these herbs can and will help many people with acne and disease, if you have too much “heat” and “dampness” in your body then herbs like this will in fact flare up your skin a little. In traditional Chinese medicine it is said that acne is caused by too much heat and dampness in the body (which are of course caused by something in your system that’s a little out of whack, like a Candida overgrowth or a congested liver for example). So you want to avoid any foods, herbs or supplements that will make this heat and dampness worse.

I also don’t think you need to become a raw foodist to get rid of your acne if you don’t want to. You can still temporarily remove the sweet taste from your diet without going raw. So if you’ve been inspired by Kevin’s video, consider removing everything sweet from your diet for a period of time (raw or not) and possibly looking into taking a colon detoxifier and/or getting colonic irrigation.

Teenagers also keep in mind that your acne is most likely caused by a hormonal imbalance from puberty, so this won’t necessarily be a cure for you. You’re better off taking more of a holistic approach. And I feel that it’s important for anyone that’s still growing or going through puberty to seek a natural therapists advise before going on any extreme diet.

I brought up this story again because I was reading an acne forum a moment ago which talked about how our emotions can be the primary cause of our acne. I’m a big believer in the connection between emotions and physical disease, so I love it when others discuss this connection between their acne and some emotional distress that occurred in their lives that they believe contributed to the problem.

Every resource that I find about the mind-body connection of acne, relates to the emotional feelings of separation and sexuality.

In my case these emotions are spot on. My severe acne started shortly after I was separated from my boyfriend and best friend of over eight years. When we were together, we were one of those couples that lived in each others pockets. We did everything together and knew each other inside out. He knew me better than anyone (even my own mother!) and probably still does.

So when he was taken away from me so suddenly, this was an extreme form of separation. It also affected my self esteem, femininity and sexuality as he left me for someone else.

My case is an extreme case, but I’m positive these same emotions induced by issues or problems that differentiate from my own have affected many others. Maybe this is you, maybe these emotions are the cause of your chronic acne.

This could also be a long shot, but it can even be said that perhaps teenage acne is linked to these emotions too. The path from being a child to a tween, teenager then adult is the ultimate path to freedom, individuality and in some way a separation from your parents. It’s also the period of your life where you’re going through an awkward sexuality stage as your travel through puberty.

In my case it just made so much sense because the only thing that changed in my life when my acne broke out was the relationship with my boyfriend. I still ate the same, had the same job, exercised in the same way and took the same supplements. I went from pretty good clear skin with the occasional premenstrual spot to full blown severe acne. It’s so obvious how connected my emotional situation was to my acne.

And because we’re talking about acne we may as well add something about Candida in here, because I’m learning how closely related an unbalanced digestive system, candida, yeast and mold are to acne inflamed skin.

I recently listened to a recorded podcast of Truth Calkins giving a presentation at a health workshop. Truth talked about how Candida can be encouraged to grow in the body with strong emotional feelings of - separation.

And David Wolfe talks about how emotional cleansing is required to overcome chronic candida, especially issues related to parents or past lovers. Do you see a lot of similarity here? I keep stumbling across this same information and it’s all so interconnected.

And of course if you have acne is does not necessarily mean that your acne is caused by an emotional problem, and it does not mean you have an issue with separation or sexuality. This is just one of the leading causes of acne, and the only mind-body connection that I’m aware of.